Events

2005 Events

The Missing Piece of the Puzzle: Caste Discrimination and the Conflict in Nepal Report and Advocacy Briefing

November 10, 2005, 6:30 p.m., NYU School of Law

On November 10, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ), Human Rights Watch Young Advocates, the NYU South Asian Law Students Association (SALSA), and nocaste.org jointly held an event on advocacy connected to CHRGJ’s report on caste discrimination and the conflict in Nepal.  The event featured panelists Professor Smita Narula, co-author of the report and Faculty Director of the CHRGJ, who also moderated the event; Mahabir Chaudhari, board member of the Backward Society Education (BASE), a non-profit organization based in Nepal; and Rajeev Goyal, co-author of the report and a J.D. candidate at the NYU School of Law.  The 70-member audience included Nepalese advocates; Dalit activists; students; journalists; and members of the Nepalese community.

The panelists discussed in depth the role of caste and ethnic discrimination in the civil war as well as advocacy initiatives to combat these human rights violations, often illustrated with narratives of personal experiences from Nepal about the extent of caste discrimination.  The panel elaborated on the main findings of the CHRGJ 65-page report The Missing Piece of the Puzzle: Caste Discrimination and the Conflict in Nepal (2005) that caste discrimination is both a cause and consequence of the conflict.  The panel further discussed the situation in Nepal since the release of the CHRGJ report, including continued restrictions on human rights defenders and on freedom of the press.  The panel also canvassed strategies within Nepal that could bring about change, including the creation of local centers to which persons can make complaints (thereby avoiding the checkpoints and security profiling that occurs when Dalits have to go to the District Office) and the need for the United Nations to be visiting rural areas.

Following the presentations of the panelists, audience members joined the panelists to brainstorm new advocacy methods, including suggestions to improve education and transparency in the country and to adopt measures aimed at empowering Dalit community members.

• For the CHRGJ report on caste discrimination in Nepal and further information on the Center’s work on Caste Discrimination and Conflict in Nepal
• Advocacy Memo prepared by the CHRGJ.
• More information about the caste system ; www.nocaste.org; www.idsn.org.
• More information on Human Rights Watch Young Advocates

Panel: Closing the First Guantánamo Prison Camps: How a Human Rights Clinic Sued the President and Won

October 26, 2005, 7:30 p.m., NYU School of Law

On October 26, 2005, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice hosted a panel that focused on the true story of how a group of law students and human rights advocates won freedom for HIV-positive Haitian refugees held on Guantánamo by the U.S. military in the early 1990s. These refugees had been intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard while fleeing from the military coup in Haiti. The Yale human rights clinic filed a lawsuit challenging this interdiction at sea, claiming that federal laws applied to Guantánamo, and that Haitian refugees could not be returned without prior screening for eligibility for refugee status.

The panel consisted of former students, lawyers, activists, and others involved in the case.  It included: former Yale students involved in the litigation, Professors Sarah Cleveland (Marrs McLean Professor in Law at the University of Texas School of Law) and Michael Wishnie (moderator) (Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School); the first instance judge, The Honorable Sterling Johnson, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York; the pro-bono attorney who assisted the students, Joseph Tringali ’80, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; a Haitian human rights activist involved in the case, Jocelyn McCalla, Executive Director of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights; and Brandt Goldstein, a Yale law student at the time of the case and author of Storming the Court: How a Band of Yale Law Students Sued the President – And Won (2005).

In their presentations, the panelists addressed issues such as: the history of the case; the experience of litigating against the federal government; difficulties in the attorney-client relationship (including the challenges in building rapport with clients in short periods of time); and the role of racism in the treatment of Haitian refugees.  In the question and answer session that followed, panelists addressed the relationship between the clients and legal team; interaction between advocacy and litigation strategies; interest of other groups (e.g. AIDS groups) in the case; and lessons learned that can be applied to current actions that human rights practitioners are taking with respect to the U.S. detention regime at Guantánamo.

• Further information about Storming the Court: How a Band of Yale Law

Film Screening: Persons of Interest

September 28, 2005, 6:30 p.m., NYU School of Law

On September 28, 2005, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic of the NYU School of Law hosted a screening of Persons of Interest.  The documentary contains interviews of persons (and/or their families, particularly where detainees had been deported) who were held indefinitely by the government in the aftermath of 9/11.  Many of these persons were never formally charged with a crime and were denied access to legal counsel or outside communication.  They were also subject to interrogations and secret deportations.  The interviewees spoke with the filmmakers, Alison Maclean and Tobias Perse, over three days in 2002, describing their harrowing experiences, while showing family photographs and letters from prison.  The film, praised by The Village Voice as "a beautiful, powerful, and moving interrogation that raises troubling questions about Attorney General John Ashcroft’s post-attack roundup," gave a voice to these detainees and/or their families after efforts by the government to depersonalize them as "terrorists."  A discussion with the filmmakers followed the screening.  This discussion focused on issues such as: advocacy that had taken place around the film; how the film had been received; cinematographic techniques designed to produce particular effects (e.g. the use of a minimalist set to emulate a prison cell and focus attention on the stories being told); and the different messages that emerged through the film (e.g. stories of migration).

• Further Information about Persons of Interest
• Further information on the Center’s work on Detainees and the "War on Terror"

Human Rights and the Media, A Conversation with Stalin K.

September 13, 2005

On September 13, 2005, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the South Asian Law Student Association (SALSA) sponsored a conversation with Stalin K., a leading human rights and media activist.  Some of Stalin K.’s recent work includes contributions to documentaries on the aftermath of the massacres in Gujarat, India in 2002, and writing and directing "Lesser Humans," a documentary on the practice of manual scavenging-an occupation exclusively reserved for India’s Dalit or so-called untouchable population.  He is also the co-founder of the Drishti Media Collective, a group of media professionals working on human rights development.

The talk was introduced by Professor Smita Narula and featured Jessica Mayberry, who has been working with Stalin K. for the last two years in forming Video Volunteers, a New York-based non-governmental organization.  The conversation focused on the relationship between media and human rights, and Video Volunteers’ efforts to place video in the hands of the community as a human rights advocacy tool.

Stalin K. discussed how one does not have to be a human rights activist by trade in order to affect change in human rights violations because "human rights is not a separate issue than life." Therefore, the enormous scope of human rights work is a responsibility that belongs to society as a whole.  The media has been of particular interest in Stalin K.’s approach to human rights. He argues that people tend to mystify media and emphasize its inaccessibility by assuming that media includes only giants such as the New York Times or CNN and not other forms, like a community’s folk and oral history traditions.  The event explored how these other forms of media could be used to create social change and communicate on behalf of voices that receive no mainstream representation until the violations reach massive proportions. Stalin K. defined his purpose as making more "human rights communicators" and giving a voice to these communities.

Video Volunteers bridges these gaps by enabling people to become active participants in their stories.  The next Video Volunteer project is in Wyoming, where the group is working with a Native American community on a water rights project. Training focuses on strengthening the creation and distribution of information, including the communication between communities and the lateral education between non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and activists.  The project is premised on the notion that human rights violations begin with a loss of agency and media can become the carrier of that silenced voice.  Its presence can consequently still bring about awareness to an issue even if there is no mass reach.  Stalin K. emphasized that "only after accepting a problem can there be a solution." The creation of this media is a step towards that solution.

Second Annual Emerging Human Rights Scholarship Conference

March 4, 2005